In this course we will study the technologies, history and applications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
This course will take place Tuesdays 12-2pm and Thursdays 10-12. The first lecture will be on Tuesday, 14th October, 12am in room SR051.
Attention: Instead of having every week one lecture and one tutorial, there will be two lectures per week until christmas and then there will be project work in 2026 with three presentations. (For more information see below)
The lectures will be held in English.
The course is structured as follows:
| TUE 14.10 LEC1 / THU 16.10 LEC2 | Introduction, history, ledger, Satoshi Nakamoto (Assignment 1: 17.10-17.11) |
| TUE 21.10 LEC3 |
Cryptographic basics: cryptographic hashing, digital signatures Simple cryptocurrency coins: GoofyCoin and ScroogeCoin |
| THU 23.10 LEC4 | Ledger vs. Blockchain (Chap. 3.1), Bitcoin and Ethereum P2P network, distributed consensus |
| TUE 04.11 LEC5 / THU 06.11 LEC6 | Consensus, operation of mining, probabilistics of mining, difficulty (Chap. 2), Numbers in today's systems, mining pools (5.4) |
| TUE 11.11 LEC7/ THU 13.11 LEC8 | Bitcoin mechanics, types of transactions (Chap. 3) (Assignment 2: 14.11-15.12) |
| TUE 18.11 LEC9 / THU 20.11 LEC10 | Bitcoin mining, mining pools (Chap. 5) |
| TUE 25.11 LEC11 / Do 27.11 LEC12 | Bitcoin anonymity, mixing services, zero coin, zero cash (Chap. 6) |
| TUE 02.12 LEC13 / Do 04.12 LEC14 | Bitcoin community, legal aspects (Chap. 7) |
| TUE 9.12.25 LEC15 | Alternative mining, Altcoins (Chap. 8, 9) (Assignment 3: 12.12-06.02) |
| In the last week before christmas there will be probably a workshop on two days in the afternoon. This workshop could be very helpful for the project work. |
|
| TUE 06.01 / THU 08.01 | Project KickOff Presentation |
| TUE 13.01 / THU 15.01 | Q&A (optional) |
| TUE 20.01 / THU 22.01 | Project Interms Presentation |
| TUE 27.01 / THU 29.01 | Q&A (optional) |
| TUE 03.02 / THU 05.02 | Project Final Presentation |
| THU 12.02.2025 | 10-12 Exam |
Literature:
Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction, by Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller, Steven Goldfeder
https://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/ this link has information about the book and links to the lecture videos produced by the authors of the book.
Links:
- https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins
- https://www.coinbase.com/
- https://www.coindesk.com
- https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts
- https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/
- http://ethviewer.live/
- https://bitnodes.io/
- https://ethernodes.org
- https://etherscan.io/
- https://bitcoin.org/en/
- https://john-mecke.medium.com/5-stories-about-people-who-lost-their-bitcoin-cdaaae329468
- https://vanitygen.net/
- https://joshua-zou.github.io/vanity-btc/
- https://bitcoin-vanity-address.com/index.php
- https://www.hedgewithcrypto.com/cryptocurrency-exchange-hacks/
- bitcoinfees.info
- mempool.space
- https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools
- https://etherscan.io/charts
- https://consensys.net/blog/blockchain-explained/the-roadmap-to-serenity-2/
- https://rekt.news/leaderboard/